Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Cities and Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Political Campaigners) Bill 2021. Labor is opposing this bill and the attack on our democracy and our civil society that it represents. Right now Australians need and deserve a government that will stand up for our democracy in all its dimensions, a government unafraid of criticism, a government that listens instead of always seeking to shut down dissenting or even just different voices. Australians can see that this means an Albanese Labor government, because only a Labor government will defend all the fundamental pillars of our democracy, including the right of ordinary Australians to come together to share their perspectives and aspirations for our future, to speak up for the voiceless, to advocate for change.

Mr Morrison, the current Prime Minister, likes his line about not telling people what to do. Of course, he listens much more attentively to focus groups than the voices of ordinary Australians. If his genuine belief is that government shouldn't be telling people what to do, he will be joining me and my Labor colleagues in voting against this bill, because that is exactly what it will do. This is yet another repressive piece of legislation telling people what they can't do—rather, telling some people what they can't do. Make no mistake: this is part of the Prime Minister's DNA. When it matters he has led a don't-do government. Whenever Australians have needed him to get to work on their behalf, he's been nowhere to be seen or has had to be dragged kicking and screaming into acting, always too little, always too late. Australians know that the leader of our national government had two jobs last year. He failed on both, and the consequences of that are still being felt, in particular in my home town of Melbourne, right now.

But these things are in the national interest. It is, of course, a very different story when it comes to his personal political interests, because Mr Morrison, the Prime Minister, will do anything to win an election, regardless of the cost. That is what this bill tells us—and the other changes he is planning to make to our electoral laws on the very eve of an election, the changes he is planning to make to how our democracy operates.

I also want to mention the changes he won't be making. More than 1,000 days after he promised Australians a national integrity commission, legislation for this is yet to appear. After so many scandals which have beset the government he leads—the car park rorts, the sports rorts, the member for Pearce's blind trust—Australians need and deserve a real anti-corruption commission at the national level to defend the integrity of our democratic institutions. What Australians don't need is desperate cynicism from our Prime Minister, a person who will do whatever it takes to cling to power, ripping up the electoral rule book as he goes. Whether it's promoting US-style voter suppression laws or trying to stop charities speaking up for vulnerable Australians on the issues that matter to their supporters and so many across our communities, he will do whatever he thinks will help him win. It's telling, though, that this doesn't include offering Australians a positive vision for our country or, indeed, defending the record of this tired, dysfunctional government into its ninth year.

Our democracy is something Australians are rightly proud of, but it cannot be taken for granted, especially now. Through the pandemic, we saw a welcome increase in Australians' attitude to government and to political institutions, with trust increasing for the first time in a long time as they saw what could be done when people put their minds to it, particularly in the states and territories that took the action needed to be taken to keep communities safe.

This increase in trust, though, is being squandered. Indeed, it is being undermined across our society when we see dark forces turning to violence. In echoes of the shocking insurrection at the US Capitol building in January, last week gallows and nooses were displayed on the steps of the Victorian parliament. Threats have been made to the lives of elected representatives. Dangerous conspiracy theories are being spread, and this has been met with dog whistling on the part of that person who should have been the first to stand unequivocally against this: Australia's Prime Minister. In another Trumpian echo, the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, spoke about understanding the frustrations of the people who were standing alongside neo-Nazis and people making threats of violence. And I say this: how hard is it to plainly say that this conduct is unacceptable in a democracy? How hard can it be to set this standard? But our cynic-in-chief couldn't bring himself to speak up for those who work to keep our community safe.

This bill and its companions, which we will be dealing with later this week, are the opposite of what is needed right now. We must come together to reinforce our democratic institutions; lift the standard of politics; show ourselves—all of us in this place—worthy of Australians and of the trust they place in us; and recognise the damage that is being done by this coarsening and cheapening of politics.

If Mr Morrison were serious about electoral integrity and public confidence in our electoral processes, he would do the following: he would support Labor's bill for real-time disclosure of political donations and lowering the disclosure threshold from the current $14,500 to a fixed $1,000 so donations are transparent for all to see before voters cast their ballots; he would reform electoral expenditure laws; he would provide more resources to the Australian Electoral Commission to increase enrolment and voter turnout; he would do something to fight dangerous misinformation and disinformation and to support our trusted and independent public broadcasters, the ABC and the SBS; he would, of course, legislate for a powerful and independent national anticorruption commission so all Australians can have every confidence in what is done in this place and in our Commonwealth bureaucracy; he would stop the relentless pork-barrelling in marginal seats, which is so corrosive of people's trust in government; and he would make laws so people like the member for Pearce can't take secret donations through blind trusts. He would join us, in short, in taking a stand for a politics that is a genuine and respectful contest of ideas, not the crude weaponisation of fears.

I've been talking about the context within which this bill is located, what's been happening to Australia's democracy, and what is proposed to be done about it. There's another context which is important too. For more than eight years, the Morrison-Joyce government and its predecessors have been at war with Australia's charities. First, they attempted to abolish the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, a body respected across the sector. When that failed, they installed as the charity commissioner longtime charity critic Gary Johns, a man who had previously said that poor women were being used as cash cows and that Australia is sucking in too many of the wrong type of immigrant—a person of that calibre. And recently the Morrison-Joyce government have attempted to give the charity commissioner the power to deregister charities because they anticipate a charity might commit a summary offence—merely anticipate. Deregistration could occur merely because a charity promotes an event, so a charity which publicises a street march on its Facebook page could be deregistered if one of the marchers commits a summary offence. So this bill is merely the latest in a consistent pattern of attacks on charities by this government—attacks which have been very effectively highlighted by my friend the member for Fenner, who has done so much work and so much hard listening with those affected, unlike the government, which has consistently tried to exclude charities from the public conversation and restrict their ability to advocate for societal change.

Well, let me be clear: Labor understands the crucial role of civil society organisations in our democracy and their role in advocacy and influencing government policy across all governments. Over the last 18 months, it's been civil society organisations who've been working to address the pre-existing fault lines in our political, social and economic systems that have been exposed and deepened through the effects of COVID-19. Labor is committed to ensure that charities and other not-for-profit organisations are free to advocate on behalf of their cause without fear of being deregistered, defunded or otherwise silenced. But in the last sitting fortnight of this year—perhaps the last sitting fortnight of this parliament—the Morrison-Joyce government are rushing through electoral legislation that has the twin purpose of, on the one hand, silencing the government's critics and, on the other hand, making sure people who may not vote for them can't vote at all.

The voter integrity bill will be debated later this week, and I will have much more to say on that, as will all of my Labor colleagues, I am sure. That bill has been the subject of much focus and debate in the last few weeks and rightfully so, because it is a blatant voter suppression tool. This bill hasn't received the same amount of attention, but it is just as important for the government to pass so it can make sure that the groups who might speak out against government policy can't. That is why we see a dodgy deal with Senator Hanson to introduce her voter ID laws in exchange, it would appear, for her support for this bill—because everything this Prime Minister does is about trying to win the next election. He has identified his narrow path to victory, involving a series of things: the votes of antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists, which is why he fails to denounce them, and tricks like voter suppression through voter ID laws that the AEC itself has said consistently are unnecessary and unwarranted and that respond to a problem that simply does not exist in Australia's democracy. In this case, it involves punishing those charities who might want to tell the truth about Mr Morrison's many failures. The government that won't require the former Attorney-General to tell the parliament who gave him a million dollars will impose onerous disclosure requirements on charities spending $100,000 on campaigns that might highlight the government failures or any other flaws in policies at the national level.

This bill will increase the number of charities and not-for-profits that are required to be registered as political campaigners and, in the process, increase their administrative burden, prevent them from accepting foreign donations and discourage them from engaging in political debate. These are very significant changes. 'Political campaigner' is a new category of political participant that was created in 2018 through the passage and enactment of the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform) Bill 2018. Currently, political campaigners are defined as individuals or organisations that spend at least half a million dollars a year or two-thirds of their annual income on electoral expenditure. Political campaigners have substantial disclosure obligations, reflecting their level of activity and political advocacy. The disclosure obligations for political campaigners are the same as those that apply for registered political parties. Political campaigners, as with parties and candidates, are also prevented from receiving foreign donations—which, of course, helps protect our democracy from foreign interference.

This bill seeks to lower the amount of electoral expenditure that an organisation needs to spend before they fall into this category. The bill lowers that threshold from half a million a year in any of the previous three financial years, or two-thirds of annual income, to $100,000 per year in any of the three previous financial years, or one-third of annual income. By reducing the electoral expenditure threshold to this degree, the political campaigners bill will result in a number of smaller charities, not-for-profits and unions currently registered as third parties, with different and lesser disclosure obligations, being required to register as political campaigners. It doesn't take much to spend $100,000 in politics, as I'm sure a former director of the New South Wales Liberal Party would know, or indeed a former director of the WA Liberals. Only a few full-page newspaper ads on a particular policy issue and a charity whose work is not party politics but is providing services for the needy or advocating for an environmentally sustainable future for our kids suddenly has the same disclosure requirements as political parties.

Organisations like the Wilderness Society, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, the Climate Action Network, Farmers for Climate Action and Greenpeace will be affected by this change—organisations that might have something important to say about this government's failure to deliver on climate policy. It will also capture groups like the Australian Christian Lobby and Christian Schools Australia, and it will capture a number of unions—and we know that this government does not want unions engaged in electoral campaigns! Currently these organisations are registered as third parties, because they spend between $14,500 and half a million on electoral expenditure. They must disclose donations they receive above the $14,500 that are for the purposes of electoral expenditure plus their total electoral expenditure.

In addition to that, charities' income and expenditure are already disclosed to the Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, but now these organisations will be characterised as political campaigners, should this bill be enacted, and will be required to disclose much more detailed information to the AEC—the same detail that a registered political party must provide, including: total receipts; the value of gifts in kind; details of receipts greater than the disclosure threshold, not limited to donations that were for electoral expenditure but would include all donations and receipts; total payments; total debts; details of debts greater than the disclosure threshold; total electoral expenditure; and details of discretionary benefits. This is a massive compliance burden for small charities and not-for-profits. Make no mistake: it will have a chilling effect on political participation, shutting out important perspectives and limiting the contest of ideas, which should be what our political contest and our electoral contest is all about.

It will also mean that all these organisations will be unable to accept donations from foreign sources. Up to now they have been able to receive charitable donations from foreign citizens, providing these are not used for electoral expenditure. Now they won't be able to accept any money at all from anyone overseas. Not only that; they will need to verify every single donation to make sure it's not from a foreign citizen. This will be unworkable for small organisations with volunteer staff. I cast my mind back to when the member for Kooyong was the parliamentary secretary to then Prime Minister Abbott and he talked about 'the bonfire of red tape'. If ever there is evidence that that was simply a bonfire of his vanity, it's a provision like this.

This, coupled with the increased disclosure obligations, will place a huge burden on these smaller organisations, which will force them into making a choice—a choice perhaps not to engage in political activity and not to publicly advocate for the causes they believe in and which so many Australians hold dear and rely on these organisations to speak to on their behalf. This is harmful for our democracy. It will have the effect of removing important perspectives, often of groups that have been marginalised or excluded from the political conversation more broadly.

The current threshold was set in 2018, not that long ago, after Labor and the charity sector fought a long campaign against this government, which wished to silence charities. At that time the Hands Off Our Charities alliance of 44 charities and not-for-profits was formed, coming from a range of sectors—education, social welfare, human rights, animal welfare, the environment, health, climate change, disability rights and philanthropy. Member organisations include Anglicare Australia, Amnesty International Australia, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Australian Council of Social Service, the Climate Council, Community Legal Centres Australia, the Human Rights Law Centre, Oxfam Australia, The Pew Charitable Trusts, UnitingCare Australia and Save the Children, amongst many others. These are organisations that do such important work in our society, but they are constantly under attack through this government. They had to form this alliance to withstand these attacks, which in part began as soon as the Abbott government was elected.

Earlier this year the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters conducted a review of the funding and disclosure reforms of 2018 and looked at whether the current thresholds were adequate. After hearing from Hands Off Our Charities and a number of other submitters, JSCEM recommended no changes to the existing threshold. Indeed, when the concept of political campaigners was first introduced, the government proposed a $100,000 threshold—a move rejected by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which considered the evidence and whose recommendation for the obligations to be proportionate to the levels of expenditure led to the half-a-billion-dollar threshold that currently stands.

In its submission to the inquiry, Hands Off Our Charities said:

Overwhelmingly, evidence in this area of law has been for more transparency of political parties, including reforms to introduce real time disclosure of political donations and to lower the donations disclosure threshold. Nevertheless, the Government has resisted these reforms on the grounds that it is a too high and unnecessary administrative burden for political parties. It is disappointing that the Committee is willing to ask third parties to take a substantial administrative burden for little extra transparency, while not offering support to key transparency reforms overwhelmingly supported by the Australian public.

But the Morrison-Joyce government's not doing any of that. It did not listen to JSCEM and maintain the existing thresholds that JSCEM found were working well—as, indeed, they are. Instead, on the eve of an election, the Morrison-Joyce government is trying to ram this legislation through so that charities and unions that might not agree with this government can't speak out publicly against it or on the issues that concern them in the lead up to the election.

This government has no shame. This government doesn't care about transparency. It doesn't care about a healthy and robust political debate. It doesn't care about democracy. If it did, it would not be attacking our charities and making it harder for people to vote, with Trump-style voter ID laws. If this government cared about democracy, it would be supporting Labor's proposals about lowering the donations threshold and requiring donations to be disclosed within seven days. This simple change would mean that voters would have this information when they go to cast their ballot and not have to wait up to 19 months to find out who is funding political parties, as they do at present. And so I'm moving a second reading amendment to do just that. I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes that the bill's explanatory memorandum states that the amendments are intended to enhance public confidence in Australia's political processes;

(2) notes further that Labor has two bills before the Senate which would actually enhance public confidence in Australia's political processes, by lowering the disclosure threshold from the current $14,500 indexed to inflation to a fixed $1,000 and requiring real time disclosure of political donations; and

(3) calls on the Coalition Government to end its attacks on groups impacted by this change, including charities and instead support Labor's political donations reforms".

If this government cared about democracy, it would be fulfilling its three-year-old promise of establishing a national anticorruption commission that's powerful and independent. But it won't, because it knows that if it does members of this government will be the first to be hauled before it. If this government cared about democracy, it would stop pork-barrelling marginally held seats. But it won't, because this government has proved that it treats public money as if it's Liberal Party money. If this government cared about democracy, it would make laws to stop politicians like the member for Pearce from taking secret donations hidden in a blind trust. But it won't, because this Prime Minister can't or won't afford to lose any of his members.

An Albanese Labor government, on the other hand, will act with integrity and transparency and with the aim of strengthening, not weakening, our democracy. As the shadow minister—soon to be, I hope, the Special Minister of State—Senator Farrell has made clear throughout his time in the role, demonstrating clearly the contrast each and every day, Senator Farrell and Labor will build on the reforms of the Hawke Labor government, the government that first introduced the political donations disclosure regime. We will establish a powerful anticorruption commission operating with the powers of a standing royal commission to investigate and hold to account Commonwealth ministers, parliamentarians, their staff and other Commonwealth public officials. And we will allow charities the space to participate in our democracy without unreasonable burdens, so they can advocate for those who need it the most. Labor is on the side of accountability and transparency in government.

Make no mistake; here we have a don't-do government. They don't do the jobs Australians need done, they don't keep their promises and they love telling Australians what not to do, sometimes what to read and often what not to say. These sittings, and indeed this debate, speak to this. Our nation right now faces some real challenges. Of course, we are presented with some exciting opportunities as the world reopens. But, looking at the Notice Paper here, you can't see any evidence of any interest in this. The priorities of the Morrison government begin and end with the political survival of the Morrison government, and that is perhaps the most damning indictment of this tired, dysfunctional mob. Four bills seeking to amend the Electoral Act are before this House right now, when there isn't one to introduce the long promised and much needed national anticorruption commission. The legislative agenda for this fortnight, perhaps the last sittings of this parliament, is barren when it comes to proposals for substantive policy reform to improve the lives of Australians.

The Morrison government has no regard for the national interest but an obsession with its political interest, with no confidence in its record; hence the determination we see here in this bill to shut out opposing and alternative viewpoints from the political debate. They have no regard for our democratic norms and institutions, nor for a vibrant and robust civil society. That is the desperation and the cynicism of the Morrison government. Australians deserve better, and all Australians deserve their voice to be heard in public affairs. That is why this bill must be rejected.

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